Midweek

This morning I went to the Foundations of Ancient History Studies lecture and arrived in excellent time, in the very large and already familiar lecture hall with down-folding blond wood chairs and the technical booth in the back at the top and the ghostly glow of a PowerPoint slideshow in front. It has a clever windowy antechamber which presumably guards from noise and conspicuous intrusions.

As it turns out the Foundations course will introduce a cluster of specializations, like Prehistoric Archaeology and Classical Archaeology, and even the seminars will rotate between the various sub-disciplines and therefore various buildings.

The professor, who looked rather like General Wesley Clark, laid out the course itself, up to the exam; his associate described the electronic resources. The professor defended the three-year Bachelor system enthusiastically, whereat I metaphorically speaking rolled my eyes.

Then I had a long interval to the next class, which I spent in finding the right room and in looking up (in an English-Modern Greek dictionary which was I think bought accidentally) the words which my Greek class materials use as phonetic examples. Someone else asked me for directions.

Greek took place in the speech laboratory today, so we sat among the cubicles with fairly rotten computers; mine refused to start up properly so I never even glimpsed the user desktop. But we spent most of the time finishing the phonetics and reading the sample words out loud. Ν can sound unusual depending where it is placed, for instance, so we spent some ten minutes with the computers in the end.

Since there was no Ancient History seminar and no evening philosophy lecture, and the career preparation advisor whom I had wanted to consult about the archaeology work course, etc., seemed very busy, I had the rest of the day off. Despite the respite, I still feel really tired. So I will continue my Greek homework and then rest in preparation for the class at 8:30 tomorrow morning.